Prison guard abuse lawsuit goes to jury

Ten convicted female felons and their lawyers told a Washtenaw County jury that, while the women were sentenced to prison, they were not sentenced to the rape and humiliation that they say they were forced to endure for years at the hands of male guards.

They are awaiting a verdict in a 12-year-old lawsuit against the Michigan Department of Corrections, a former MDOC director and a retired warden.

The lawsuit filed by the women, a representative sample of a class of about 500 current and former inmates in Michigan women's prisons, went to trial three weeks ago.

The case went to the jury of six women and four men late Thursday. Eight of the jurors must agree to reach a verdict. The jury deliberated until 9 p.m. and was scheduled to return again at 10 a.m. Friday.

The women's stories were different, and yet the same.

All of them were assaulted, they testified, by a corrections officer at Scott Correctional in Plymouth who resigned after a laundry list of rules violations in 1996. They were also assaulted, sometimes raped, by other officers over a period of years, they told the jury.

The women admitted that most of them did not report the abuse.

There was no point, they testified. The officer who assaulted all of them had been investigated 20 times, he told them, "and they can't touch me."

And there was a great risk, the women, some now out of prison, testified.

The officers could and did retaliate with tickets for misconduct that could put them in isolation, cost them access to their education, visitation, and even their release, the women said.

Still, one of the women's attorneys told the jury, the federal Department of Justice, Human Rights Watch and even the United Nations issued reports in the 1990s about conditions at Scott and other Michigan prisons, excoriating the corrections system and the state.

State Assistant Attorney General Allan Soros, representing the MDOC, former director Ken McGinnis, and retired Scott warden Joan Yukins, repeatedly told the jury that Yukins and the state could do nothing about allegations that were never made.

But Yukins testified earlier this week that when the federal and Human Rights Watch reports came out she was aware of all of the incidents, and was investigating some of them.

"Did they know about this?" plaintiffs' attorney Richard A. Soble asked the jury. "My lord, the world knew about this. The defendants were the people in charge.

"They had the power to stop it," Soble said. "Everyone was begging them to ... stop the torture. They took the reports, and did nothing."

A former corrections officer testified that, when she transferred from a men's prison to a women's prison, during her first midnight shift she saw four male officers go into four inmates' rooms and close the doors.

She said she demanded they leave, and reported those and other incidents in her five years at Scott. None was ever investigated, and none of the men were disciplined, she testified. She said she eventually resigned because of threats.

Yukins, the only witness called by the state, testified that she never interviewed inmates or officers when an allegation was made - that was the duty of other staff. She did order several criminal investigations, she said.

But when plaintiffs' attorney Deborah A. Labelle asked if she fired officers, she said she did not.

Yukins said she was so afraid of some of her own staff she obtained permission from the state to carry a handgun into the prison for protection. Once, she said, she drove to the nearby State Police post, rather than head home, when she was stalked by an employee.

Two psychiatrists who specialize in trauma, victimization and incarceration testified that the 10 women they evaluated all suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and would suffer from it to some degree for the rest of their lives.

Soble asked for $1 million to $3 million for three of the women who were teenagers, one of them a virgin, when they allege the assaults began. He sought $500,000 to $1 million for another five women who alleged sexual penetration. He asked for $200,000 to $300,00 for the remaining two women, who did not allege penetration.

Soros argued that, while one of the investigative reports indicated that Michigan women's prisons had 10 criminal convictions of corrections officers in the same time that the entire rest of the country had 20, that only means that Michigan takes the crime more seriously than other states.

"Some states don't even consider it a crime" for corrections officers to rape or have sex with the female inmates whose lives they control, Soros said.